Snake Shrines.
In various places snakes are provided with special shrines. Thus, in Garhwâl, Seshanâga is honoured at Pandukeswar; Bhekal Nâg at Ratgâon; Sangal Nâg at Talor; Bânpa Nâg at Margâon, and many others of the same kind.[92] In fact, all along the Himâlaya the worship extensively prevails. Kailang Nâg is the chief Himâlayan godling, and as the Vedic Ahi controls the clouds, so he gives fine weather. A victim is killed, and one of his disciples, after drinking the blood, gets into a state of afflatus. Finally, he gasps out that the sacrifice is accepted, and falls down in a state of exhaustion. The old shrine to the serpent deity at Kângra, known as Baghsu Nâg, has been converted into a Saiva temple under the name of Baghsunâtha, another instance of the adoption of strange deities into orthodox Hinduism.
“The Nâg is specially the guardian of cattle and water-springs. According to the legend, the valleys of Kashmîr and Nepâl were in some remote period the abode of Nâgas. The milk of a cow is usually presented to a Nâg, and goats and sheep are usually sacrificed to him, as to other godlings. So far as I am aware, the only place in the Himâlaya where the living snake is worshipped is at the foot of the Rotung pass.”[93] The Nepâl serpent king is Karkotaka, who dwelt in the lake Nâgavâsa, and Siva in the form of Karkotaka Nâga has a temple at Barha Kotra in the Bânda District.
In one of the Nepâl temples is a representation of a Nâg Kanyâ, a serpent maiden or mermaid, sitting on a tortoise.[94] This serpent maiden constantly appears in Indian folk-lore. Such is Vijayâvatî, daughter of Gandamâlin, one of the snake kings, who is of surpassing loveliness, rescues and marries the hero. She is represented by the Melusina of European folk-lore, and one of her kindred survived to our own day, to appear as Elsie Venner in one of the finest novels of this generation.[95]
Curious as it may appear, all the Kashmîr temples were originally surrounded by artificial tanks, constructed in order to propitiate the Nâgas. Ancient stones covered with figures of snakes are occasionally to be seen worked up into the walls of modern buildings. Abul Fazl says that in his time there were nearly seven hundred figures of snake gods existing in Kashmîr. The snake, it is needless to say, is a common emblem in temples all over the country. An ancient temple at Bilâspur in the Central Provinces has, as its only image, that of the cobra.[96]
Snake-worship appears constantly in history and legend. There is a passage in Plutarch from which it appears to have been the custom to sacrifice an old woman (previously condemned to death for some crime) to the serpent gods by burying her alive on the banks of the Indus. Ktesias also mentions the worship of snakes, and in the Buddhist legends snakes are often referred to as the guardian deities of towns.[97]
In the folk-tales, Naravâhanadatta worships snakes in a grove sacred to them, and Bhîmabhatta goes to the temple of the chief of the snakes, which he finds full of long wreaths of flowers in form like serpents, and a great lake sacred to Vâsuki, studded with red lotuses, which seemed like clouds of smoke from the fume of snake poison.[98]
A curious legend tells how Kadrû and Vinatâ were the two wives of the patriarch Kasyapa, the former being the mother of the serpent race, and the other of the birds. A discussion arose between them regarding the colour of the tails of the horses of the sun, Vinatâ insisting that they were white and Kadrû that they were black. It was agreed that whichever of the two was proved to be wrong should serve the other. So Kadrû contrived to fasten one of her black snakes on to the back of one of the horses, and Vinatâ, thinking this was the real tail, accepted defeat; so the snakes rule the birds for ever.
Nahusha, according to one version of his legend, aspired to the love of the queen of India when her husband concealed himself because he had killed a Brâhman. A thousand Rishis bore the litter of the presumptuous sinner through the air, and when in his pride he touched Agastya Muni with his foot, the offended sage cursed him, and he became a serpent. Finally he was pardoned by the intercession of Yudhisthira, threw off his serpent form, and was raised to the heaven of the gods.
Near Jait, in the Mathura District, is a tank with the broken statue of a hooded serpent in it. Once upon a time a Râja married a princess from a distant land, and wished to bring her home with him. She refused to come until he announced his lineage. Her husband told her that she would regret her curiosity, but she persisted. At last he took her to the river and warned her again, but in vain. Then he told her not to be alarmed at anything she saw, adding that if she did so, she would lose him. Saying this, he began to descend slowly into the water, all the time trying to dissuade her, till the water rose to his neck. Then, after a last attempt to induce her to abandon her curiosity, he dived and reappeared in the form of a Nâga, and raising his head over the water, he said, “This is my lineage. I am a Nâgavansi.” His wife could not suppress an exclamation of grief, on which the Nâga was turned into stone, where he lies to this day. Here we have another instance of the consequences of the violation of the curiosity taboo.[99]
The town of Nigohan in the Lucknow District is said to have been founded by Raja Nâhuk of the Chandravansi line of kings. Near it is a large tank, in which the legend says that the Râja, transformed into a snake for the sin of killing a Brâhman, was compelled to live. Here at length the Pândava brothers, in their wanderings after their battle with the Kauravas, came, and as they went to draw water, the serpent put to each of them five questions touching the vanity of human wishes and the advantages of absorption from the world. Four out of the five brethren failed to answer and were dragged under the water, but the riddle was solved by the fifth. The spell was thus loosed, and the Râja’s deliverer had come. The Pându put his ring round the body of the serpent, and he was restored to human form. In his gratitude he performed a great sacrifice, and to this day the cultivators digging small wells in the centre of the tank in the dry season, come across the burnt barley, rice, and betel-nuts used in the sacrifices.[100]
The old Buddhist traveller thus describes the serpent deity in the temple at Sankisa in the Farrukhâbâd District—“A white-eared dragon is the patron of this body of the priests. It is he who causes fertilizing and seasonable showers of rain to fall within their country, and preserves it from plagues and calamity, and so causes the priesthood to dwell in security. The priests, in gratitude for these favours, have erected a dragon chapel, and within it placed a seat for his accommodation; and, moreover, they make special contributions in the shape of religious offerings to provide the dragon with food. Towards the end of each season of rest, the dragon incontinently assumes the form of a little serpent, both of whose ears are white. The body of priests, recognizing him, place in the midst for his use a copper vessel full of cream. The serpent then proceeds to come down from the highest part of the alcove, all the while moving, as though he would pay his respects to all those around him. He then suddenly disappears. He makes his appearance once every year.”[101]
According to Gen. Cunningham, the only spot which can be identified with any certainty at Sankisa is the tank of the Nâga, which still exists to the south-east of the ruins. The name of the Nâga is Kârewar, which appears to mean “the black one,” and that of the tank Kandaiya Tâl. Milk is still offered to him on every day of May, the Nâgpanchamî festival in August, and at any other time when rain is wanted.[102]
There are many instances of this control of the Nâga over the weather. Thus, in Nepâl, when Râja Gunkamdeva committed incest, the gods in their wrath withheld the rain. Finally the Râja managed to catch the great Nâga Karkotaka, and the other Nâgas came and worshipped him and gave him each a likeness of himself drawn with his own blood, and declared that whenever there was a drought hereafter, plentiful rain would fall as soon as these pictures were worshipped.
So, Gorakhnâtha confined the nine Nâgas, and there was a drought until Matsyendranâtha appeared and released them, on which the clouds gave rain.[103]
The plan of propitiating the Nâga with an offering of milk is found also in the case of the Durham legend of the Lambton worm and the dragon of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire.[104]
The sacred dragons of this kind are innumerable. The Buddhist cave at Pabhosa in the Allahâbâd District was the home of a monster of this class, who was subdued by Buddha.[105] That in the dragon tank at Râmagrâma used to assume the form of a Brâhman.[106] Dr. Buchanan tells of another at Bhâgalpur. “They showed me a hole in a rock opening into a hollow space close by the path leading up to their village. They said that this hole was the abode of a very large serpent, which they considered a kind of god. In cold weather they never saw it, but in the hot season it was constantly observed lying in the hollow before its den. The people pass by it without apprehension, thinking it understands their language, and would on no account injure one of them, should even a child or a drunken person fall on it.”[107]
But all such snakes are not friendly. In the Hitopadesa, the faithful mungoose takes the place in the legend of Bethgelert of the hound and kills the deadly snake. Some reference to this famous folk-tale will be made in another connection. Aghâsura, “the evil demon,” the king of the serpents, tried to devour the divine infant Krishna. When he and his foster-father Nanda were asleep together, a huge boa-constrictor laid hold of Nanda by the toe, and would speedily have devoured him, but Krishna, hearing his cries, ran to his side and lightly set his foot on the monster’s head. At the very touch the serpent was transformed, and assumed the figure of a lovely youth; “for years ago a Ganymede of Heaven’s Court, by name Sudarsana, in pride of beauty and exalted birth, had vexed the holy sage Angiras when in deep contemplation, by dancing backwards and forwards before him, and by his curses had been metamorphosed into a snake, in that vile shape to expiate his offence, until the advent of Krishna.”[108] We have already spoken of another famous Mathura snake, the Nâga of Jait, whose tail is supposed to reach underground to Brindaban, seven miles away.[109] The curious dragon cave at Kausambhi at Allahâbâd was one of the last notable discoveries of the Archæological Survey.[110]